Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the for-the-long-weekened dept

Close race this week, but coming out on top for "most insightful" was a comment from The Buzz Saw in response to Disney's Anthony Accardo whining that the tech industry hasn't propped up legacy businesses that are slow to adapt to a changing market. TBS points out that since Accardo is only focused on "protecting" rather than innovation, you would get results that simply piss people off (something the entertainment industry does all too often):

Innovation to enforce copyright, eh?

I'm curious. As a software engineer myself, exactly how is the tech community to come up with an algorithmic (excuse me... "innovative") mechanism to detect a license/copyright? For one thing, the "tech community" has been trying that for years. DRM anyone?

I make it a point to sell my talent, not my output. My output can be copied and reused eternally, and that is a desirable trait! My ability to create such useful output is obviously a scarce good, and I find myself able to sell it accordingly. :)

The reason the "tech community" (such a ridiculous generalization of a term) refuses to support Big Content in its endeavor to lock down content is that the end result would be a ridiculous sense of entitlement.

If Big Content had its way...

A TV would refuse to function, because it detects too many viewers.

A camera would not shoot, because it would sense a "no cameras" signal in the area.

An application would fail to launch, because the keyboard detected fingerprints other than those of the original licensee.

A Blu-ray would not start, because it senses you exceeded its viewing quota, and you need to go buy the movie again.

A song would not play, because the attached speakers are too awesome, and you are not licensed to hear so much bass.

A book would erase its words, because its GPS would detect that it is being read in a country where the book is not released yet.

Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

Coming in a close second is this excellent rant by Jeni in response to someone who tried to make the latest domain seizures an issue of "conservatives" vs. "liberals":

Oh for the love of pete here we go ... With all due respect considered, I can't keep my lips zipped this time 'round but before I unload just please do note that I respect your right to feel that way and state as such; however, I will now take my right to express a resounding "BUT".

Every discussion has someone who just HAS to start in on this crap i.e., "Conservative vs. Liberal", "Bush vs. Obummer" - when the heck are we going to LET IT GO and understand this is no longer about party politics?

All you accomplish when you start that rant is more division amongst what would otherwise be people who by and large agree on something far, FAR bigger than party politics - OUR COLLECTIVE FREEDOM.

Can we ever let go of all that petty nonsense and pull together to focus on the larger picture? The fact is, the current administration and the previous - one on each side of the "fence" - continue to trample on our freedoms. That should be the main concern. Personally, it's my opinion the current uber liberal/progressive admin is far, FAR worse but both are at fault.

IMHO, it has now come down to We, the People vs. Tyrannical Government, period. And tyranny is just another form of terrorism.

Off soapbox...

Very happy this one got voted insightful. It's not about party politics, and anyone who tries to make it about party politics is selling something you don't want to buy.

Moving on to editor's choice, I'm going with just one this week, from someone using the name Security Theater, in response to the claim from the Justice Department that all flights out of Texas might have to be cancelled if the TSA can't grope people, because ".... Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew." As ST points out, this is an impossible standard:

Wait ... wouldn't that imply that they have to cancel all flights immediately? They already cannot ensure the safety of passengers and crew, because all the TSA currently does is pretend they make flights more secure, while consuming lots of tax dollars.

While the "insightful" side may have been a tight race, the winner for "funny" was no contest. In response to the post about how the ACLU and EFF are seeking to find out what companies rolled over and just handed info over to the government without alerting users in its investigation of Wikileaks, ts posited... and then disqualified one candidate:

Was it Sony?

Oh wait, Sony doesn't give out customer info.. they just let people come in and take what they want.

That probably does rule them out. Coming in second was PrometheeFeu, responding to the news that Adele's ex-boyfriend was demanding royalties for being the inspiration for all her songs about having a terrible boyfriend and their ensuing breakup. It's all about incentives, you see:

But if the boyfriend isn't given his fair share, what incentive will he have to be a jerk to his girlfriends in the future? Do you really want women to be happy Mike? That's despicable of you.

For editor's choice, I'll go with three funny ones (to make up for the only one extra insightful post -- it's a long weekend, might as well go out on more funny). First up, is Raphael's response to the Senate Judiciary Committee approving PROTECT IP:

This comment does not exist.

I think this bill is [content filtered for national security reasons]. I also think that [content filtered for trademark reasons] is [content filtered for possible defamation reasons] and [content filtered for possible defamation reasons].

Basically, what I mean is that if we don't [content filtered for national security reasons] we'll end up [content filtered for national security reasons] unless we immediately start [content filtered for national security reasons] with the services provided by [content filtered for copyright reasons]

Next up is an Anonymous Coward trying to answer my question about why Congress had to literally (physically) fly the PATRIOT Act extension to Europe for Obama to sign, rather than sending it digitally.

But if they make a digital version than pirates can get it.

And, finally, we've got Gwiz's response to the news that Roger Ebert's projectionist, whose name is James Bond, is annoyed by the requirements from Sony to get passwords to change lenses on new digital projectors. Gwiz thought that if you're going to go by the name James Bond, you should live up to the expectations set by your name:

Well, one would think that a projectionist named James Bond would already have the security clearance to open the projector. Or at least the skills to bypass them with a laser disguised as a pen and a watch with a super powerful magnet.

But, then again, who wants to watch a movie that is shaken, not stirred?

Tomorrow's a holiday for those of us in the US, so things will be quiet around here... so go enjoy the (hopefully) nice weather outside for a bit.

Re: Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

That post and the comment you're sort of quoting have nothing to do with "taking for free."

The problem is that you assume everyone in here is pirating whatever they can get their hands on, rather than pointing out the faults of a system that rewards certain industries for failing to adapt.

Saying that chasing down piracy is a waste of time and money IS NOT the same thing as saying piracy is cool and go do more of it, etc.

Yes, it's a free country... to a point. I don't have to watch Big Content. But whether or not I patronize Big Content, I still have to deal with the laws put in place solely to benefit Big Content.

Liking or not liking Big Content is no longer the issue. I may have zero interest in anything Big Content creates, but their legislative power affects me anyway.

Quick example: plenty of indie bands put their stuff up for download (for free, if you can believe it!) on torrents or at digital storage lockers. Big Content would like these shut down as they can't find any legitimate way to police them. ("Legitimate" is a fake term, meaning they haven't been able to twist the law into doing this... yet.) However, under the broad name of "infringement," they're working hard to get these blocked or shut down. Google already omits them from searches.

So, what happens when you have a site that hosts links to both "infringing" content and non-infringing content? Well, the government isn't going to sort that out. They'll just seize the domain. Now, I can't get to the legitimate stuff I wanted (temporarily, something else always takes it place -- another reason why this sort of action is short-sighted and moronic) because it got swept in with the "bad stuff."

I don't have to be a "thief" to be harmed by legislation and other anti-piracy actions. I get shit on with DRM even though I'm not stealing software. I get to pay a tariff on blank media even if I'm not ripping rented movies or downloading Big Content's products.

So, get over this "if you're against Big Content, you're a thief." It's a bullshit argument. People can still be for copyright laws but realize that 100+ years is way too long to keep something tied to one person and their heirs. Conversely, someone can argue for abolishing or reducing copyright length without being a "thief."

Universal Music Group is concerned that users will load pirated songs into lockers. Average MP3 players house more than a thousand songs and UMG believes that many were unpaid for. They do not want to see the billions of songs that came from P2P system laundered (think drug money) in a cloud service and become legitimate.

For some time UMG has been demanding that online music retailers embed personal information in every song they sell. They call it UITS. iTunes has been inserting email addresses into every song while other retailers like Napster are using a unique receipt number.

Basically, if you don't have a receipt for YOUR music, the labels don't want you to be able to upload it. So they control Jamendo music or any other music out there. It's a revisit to the 1980s.

Re: Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

Re: Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

Laws that favor "big content" still prevent me from freely using public airwaves and receiving the benefit of that use. They make it more difficult for others, those who want to release their content under permissive licenses, from distributing their content over public airwaves. Those people lose the advantage of receiving the larger audience that public airwave use can give them, and that advantage can help promote more and better permissibly licensed content. Cableco monopolies also make it more difficult for permissibly licensed content to receive a large audience, which deters the production of such content (since production often needs consumption. Content creators can better distribute their free content and make money off of charging for other things, for example, which is how they often have made their money). The same goes for the actions of collection societies that make it more difficult and expensive for restaurants and other venues to host independent performers, under the pretext that someone might infringe, thanks to broken laws that encourage such behavior. Internet based service providers must police their content and magically know what is and isn't infringement, and they will roll those costs back down to me one way or another. If someone gives me some software or a picture or a song or something and I am told that the content is released under a CC license and it's really not, I can get in trouble. The law places no burden on the copy protection holder to help me know that this content is protected (since copy protection is opt out), all that burden is placed on everyone else. If I use that content, thinking that it's released under a permissive license, in a profitable way (or if I massively distribute or replay it) I can get in trouble. Someone can claim that content they don't like is protected and that they 'own' such content and they can demand that content be taken down, how is a service provider to know the difference? The punishment for such false claims is far lower than the punishment for infringement and the law encourages service providers to shoot first and ask questions later. This can have an impact on those who want to upload or distribute their permissively licensed content. Others, including businesses, might be afraid to use permissively licensed content in fear of getting sued if the content isn't really permissively licensed. That can hurt content creators that want to create permissively licensed content which will reduce the quantity and quality of such content. Even if I have no interest in copy protected material, these laws do affect me.

You may argue that people consume such content, but part of the reason why people consume such content is because the laws have artificially made it more difficult for permissively licensed content to be consumed and hence produced. With less competing content available and widely distributed, thanks to laws that artificially make it so, people will naturally be encouraged to consume more non-permissively licensed content. If it weren't for our intentionally broken legal system more and better alternative content will likely be produced and consumed, as the Internet has shown that better distribution opportunities do result in more and better content. The laws outside the Internet artificially restrict distribution and artificially and wrongfully places distribution power into the hands of monopolist gatekeepers, and that deters the consumption and production of more and better permissively licensed content.

Re: Re: Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

and here is an example of how the law places the burden of knowing what is and what isn't infringement on everyone else. The RIAA et al are too lazy to even administer (an up to date) list of their albums so that people can know what songs are covered and what artists are signed by them and avoid infringement. Too much work for them. Instead, all of that burden is wrongfully placed on everyone else.

Re: Re: Re: Yeah, I am very comfortable over here NOT on your side, Big Content

and I've seen the argument, "oh, but with Internet search engines these days, it's easy to know what is and what isn't infringement. Just Google it. You guys have all these technological tools you can use to help you"

From the RIAA radar site.

"What if the RIAA Radar result is incorrect?
Since the album data is not ours, and the RIAA member listings are terribly inaccurate and erroneous, it is possible that the Radar may return incorrect results. We do not claim that the data or the Radar results to be 100% correct, but we use a lot of user information and double-checking to make sure the application is as accurate as it can be by itself. The application should be used to help your purchasing research, not be it."

It's not always easy for people to know what is and what isn't infringement and who holds copy protection privileges on what. Sites that dedicate so much effort into trying to approximate this with little guarantee wouldn't be necessary if this were so (and this site mostly just covers mainstream media, like RIAA et al media. Imagine how much harder it is to figure out if content made by Joe Blow is protected).

The point here is that the burden of knowing what is and what isn't infringement is placed on everyone else. It's placed on Google (ie: for us to search) it's placed on riaaradar, it's placed on those who want to use some content, it's placed on everyone except the copy protection holders. The argument "oh, but with Internet search these days and with all of these tools available to us, we have no excuses" really translates to "Everyone else can hold the burden of knowing what is and what isn't infringement. I don't want the law to place any burden on copy protection holders to help others know. That burden can be placed on search engines, websites, users, groups of users and people, all of these tools and the makers of these search and other technological tools, etc... but copy protection holders should not bear any burden whatsoever."

What is it with people like yourself? Here's a guy who has a very well thought out argument about the problems with copyright holders, and all you can say is he's greedy, slimy and a coward. The Techdirt community welcomes debate and arguments, not a non-response like yours that reveals that the guy you just insulted is actually right, and that your only possible response is to slander him.
Next time, come up with a decent response, not insults. It makes you look like a turd.

Oh, and I actually do have terabytes of content on hard drives. Know what else I also have? Tons of DVDs, books and games, all paid for legally. I have actually purchased, GASP WITH MONEY, games from Steam and gog.com. So...still think we're thieves?

Everyone knows people like you have terabytes of content that you are aware was obtained illegally.

Wrong.

You assume this about anyone who disagrees with your arguments. Not pro-copyright = thief.

If that's all you've got, then save yourself the typing and just respond with "Thief." It does the same thing as your longer responses, which should leave you free to go waste those extra letters somewhere else.